Snapshot of July 2026 Retailer Comp Sales Confirms Our Positioning
We’ve spent some time collecting July 2026 quarter comp sales figures from retailers that have reported results for that three month period. Entering this earning season shift to retailers, we called out the 6.6% year-over-year increase in Retail only sales for the three months ending July 2026. That tells us that companies with comp sales above that 6.6% figure are taking consumer wallet share from those that are below that level.
Before we discuss our observations from the below table, let’s remember that Costco’s ($COST) adjusted U.S. comp sales for the May-June-July 2026 period were 8.7%, 7.6%, and 6.9%, respectively. The sandbox math will show a figure for the July quarter that is above the 6.6% figure discussed above.
Turning to the table, a few things stand out to us. First is the vast majority of companies did not even come close to that 6.6% figure. Some of there more focused retailers like Best Buy ($BBY) also came up short compared to the 6.2% year over year figure for Electronics & Appliance Store retail sales in the July 2026 quarter. We see the same for Dick’s Sporting Goods ($DKS) compared to the Sporting Goods and related category.
Second, with Wednesday’s July PCE Price Index we learned the year-over-year figure for the July 2026 period was around 3.8%. When we take that into consideration, it tells us that those companies whose comp sales were at 3.8%, like Target ($TGT) or below like a number of the companies in the table, the volume of product sold was at best flat year over year or down compared to what they sold during the July 2025 quarter.
Third, when we look at the companies that lead the pack of the July quarter — Ross Stores ($ROST), BJ’s Wholesale ($BJ) and Costco ($COST) — it confirms that consumers are feeling the pressure of higher prices, and are leaning into those companies that can help them stretch the spending dollars they do have.
Against that backdrop, we remain bullish on the shares of One rated Costco and TJX ($TJX), and Two rated Amazon ($AMZN). And yes, the August to date retreat in AMZN shares has us working through that Two rating. We see some nice support for AMZN shares between $251 and $254, and a positive test of that support would give us another reason to reconsider that Two rating.
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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AMZN, COST and TJX.
